An Edmonton fertility doctor who admitted to being involved in a drug bribery scheme spanning more than two years will pay a $5,000 fine and have his practising license temporarily suspended, following a hearing last week by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta.
In a 2021 letter, Dr. Tarek Motan told patients he saw between August 2015 and November 2017 that he participated in financial kickback agreements with three pharmaceutical companies while working at the fertility clinic at Lois Hall Women’s Hospital.
In the letter, he says he paid for fertility drugs including Gonal-F, Puregon and Menopur without the permission or approval of Alberta Health Services (AHS) or the provincial regulator, the Council of Professional Medical Surgeons of Alberta (CPSA), and placed the financial refunds he received into an account he controlled for educational purposes.
In his letter, Mottin apologized to patients and said he had sometimes prescribed higher doses of medicines he believed would help them but may have put some patients at risk of side effects.
The doctor admitted that he accepted kickback payments, referred patients to Glengarry Pharmacy, which received a portion of the kickbacks, without informing the patients (and without obtaining their informed consent), and failed to follow the college’s standards of practice regarding conflicts of interest.
During the CPSA’s online hearing on Thursday morning, the court accepted his admissions which amounted to unprofessional conduct.
Craig Boyer, general counsel for the university’s grievance manager, said at the hearing that Mottan did not realise at the time that his actions violated conflict of interest standards.
He also said the doctor did not spend the money on himself but kept it in his bank account.
“He didn’t go out and buy a race car or anything like that,” Boyer said.
Sanctions
Boyer submitted a joint opinion on sanctions negotiated with Motin’s lawyers, which included a six-month suspension of his practice permit and a $5,000 fine.
Boyer said those sanctions were consistent with those imposed in similar cases.
As part of the joint filing, he said Mottan could choose to either use the refund to help settle the class action lawsuit he currently faces, or to donate it (without receiving a tax deduction).
Mottan will also be liable to pay half the costs of any investigation and hearing into his conduct.
The doctor’s lawyer, James Heelan of the law firm Bennett Jones, told the hearing committee his client was “deeply embarrassed by the situation he found himself in” and had “repeatedly expressed deep regret” for mishandling conflicts of interest.
He said Mottan had already been suspended from AHS and was suspended for a further three-and-a-half months, had been subjected to “intense media scrutiny” and had undergone ethics training.
He also said a regulator’s investigation into patient complaints had found no clinical concerns.
Heelan said since the women’s clinic’s uninsured IVF services ended in 2017, Mottan has continued working at the hospital, seeing patients who cannot afford private fertility treatments.
Heelan said the joint sanctions proposal was reasonable.
“It is clear that he will be severely punished for his actions,” he said.
The review court agreed with the opinion on sanctions and a written decision is expected to be issued shortly.
CBC News reached out to Motin through his lawyer on Friday but did not receive a response.
In 2021, the Alberta College of Pharmacy told CBC News that a complaint about the Glengarry pharmacy’s owner was received in 2019 and an investigation was completed in January 2020.
A university spokesman said at the time that the pharmacist had acknowledged his actions in the case.
A spokesman said the college had requested changes to pharmacists’ behaviour and the way pharmacies were run to ensure public safety.
Class action lawsuit
In March 2023, a proposed class action lawsuit was filed against Mottan, his company, the pharmacy and the pharmacists.
According to an amended complaint filed in Edmonton court in April 2023, members of the plaintiffs’ group – women who received fertility treatment from Mottan between August 2014 and November 2018 – were allegedly subjected to unnecessary and inappropriate medical procedures and prescriptions for medications.
According to the lawsuit, members of the plaintiffs’ group were prescribed “excessive amounts” of fertility drugs and experienced adverse health effects, including ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome.
Plaintiff Shannon Fuller is seeking $5 million in damages on behalf of all plaintiffs.
Frew told CBC News on Monday he was disappointed the class action lawsuit was mentioned during the hearing “without any real context about its significance.”
No answer has been filed and none of the allegations have been proven in court.
